


mechanical and thin

by uniformly (scramjets)



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: HBO Secret Santa, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 23:15:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5516822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scramjets/pseuds/uniformly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>At twenty seven, he’d been operating on a specific set of guidelines. Webster had come to him at twenty two, more or less, young enough to test them.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	mechanical and thin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carlough](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carlough/gifts).



> Prompt: _At some point after the war, Webster’s former lover (could be anyone, I’m not picky) learns through somebody’s offhand remark in casual conversation that he died/went missing at sea and was presumed dead. Everyone thought he already knew because they were so close, except that Web’s ex hadn’t spoken to him since the war (for a reason of your choice – a fight, fear, stigma, etc) and now all of those feelings are coming storming back in the worst way possible. Note: does not have to follow the real life timeline at all and would actually likely be easier without it._
> 
> This fic has the distinction of being the heaviest story I've written in a painfully short amount of time; my brain is mush. A million apologies for any mistakes, and I hope it even slightly measures up to what you were after.

Two letters sit in the mail box, the envelopes paper thin and flimsy, stamps sitting crooked in the upper right. Joe takes them out more aware of how the afternoon sun stings against his neck, this side of a sunburn after spending the day moving around pallets of bricks. The concrete dust on his fingers smears against the grain of paper as he flips the envelopes over to read the return addresses. One’s from a sister, the one who keeps him up to date with family further up the coast. The letter comes thick with stories of knee high nieces and nephews, no doubt, and with questions on how he’s doing and when he’s coming to visit.

Joe pushes through the gate, shifting it open with a sharp squeal and closing after him with a rattle that shakes the entire frame. The sound of his boots are muffled against the concrete, and he strides up the steps of his apartment, jams the letters under an arm and juggles his keys to open the door.

There’s a clip of nails once he’s inside and Jagger greets him with a snuff to his legs and Joe squats, sets everything aside to catch Jagger’s head between his hands to give him a good scratch. Jagger’s entire rear end sways with the force of his tail and Joe grabs his gear and stands, spine popping and knees complaining with a grind of bone and a stutter of pain that fades out almost as soon as it’s registered.

The second letter is a thin one from George. Joe’s thumb slides over the imprint of his name and address, the angular grind that would have pressed into the sheet inside.

George’s letters come in intermittent bursts: silence for months and then three at once, detailing whatever’s happened since the last. Joe hasn’t been present to any of the Easy reunions to ask if _this how you guys get it, too_ , only remembering on the trips back home. The trips he’d started and then turned back from, the idleness of the shimmery-black column of tarmac turning his thoughts to the letters miles in and too late, and Joe always thinks, _next time._

Joe slides a thumb beneath the seal, the paper still sun-warm, and the thin edge of it slices into the pad as he drags his thumb across. Joe hisses and jerks his hand back. Blood smears on the paper and Joe presses his thumb against his mouth, seals his lips against it and tucks his teeth against the cut. The metallic tang is unpleasant, but the concrete dust comes through strong; dry and cottony – the layer rough against his lips and teeth, and nothing like the smooth taste of metal or the black line of soil beneath his nails.

Jagger whines and butts his legs with his head, enough to make Joe’s knees buckle, and Joe takes his hand from his mouth – it sounds like a kiss, something he’d press to a cheek – and he reaches down to pat Jagger’s flank.

Dinner’s sorted not long after – leftovers warmed up from the fridge and eaten while he leans against the kitchen table; a small, laminated circle that a friend had presented to him when he’d moved in. The surface of it is a cityscape of nicks and scratches. There’s a stab of fork tines in the centre that Joe sometimes trails his fingers over, only half aware while he smokes his evenings away.

He reads the stories about his nieces and nephews first. How they’re growing up and how they’re doing in school, the sorts of stories that are designed to soothe when the question of _coming back home_ turns up, as it does, a couple of pages later. Clara never asks around the question, just slides it into the middle of the page and underlines it with a: _anytime you wanna, Joey._

Joe lights up a cigarette, smoke curling into the distant quiet of the apartment, the walls and floors of it bare, kept to a military readiness. He could live without a lot of things, if things came down to it.

Jagger rests his head on Joe’s thigh and looks up to him with his liquid black eyes as if he’d heard the thought turned over in Joe’s head, and Joe presses a hand to the silkiness of his ears in apology, and Jagger’s tail thumps on the carpeted floors, happy again.

The smear of blood on George’s letter has faded into brown. It looks nothing more than dirt and it’s only the sting on his thumb that tells Joe otherwise when he finally drags the letter out.

George’s hand is hurried and there are blotches of ink that make Joe think of all the times George had paused while taking inventory to yell something, ink bleeding into the page and making him swear when he had finally turned back to what he was doing. The pen George uses in his letters are ballpoints, but it still blots and smears, leaves gaps in the middle of words, making George scratch out lines in the corners of the page until he can coax out more blue or black, or green, as it had been one instance. Joe’d almost thrown that letter out, the lines too faint to read.

George never starts with _how are you_ s or suchlike, launches straight in to the meat of the news and Joe glosses over it until his attention stumbles on: _since Webster died_. And he stops and reads again: _I’m not sure who’s contacted you, if they had, since the funeral has already passed. Did you get the letter? Babe says he sent it thru, but you changed houses since Webster died_. The rest of the letter fuzzes out in a static that bleeds across the page, spills over his hands, and grows in the small living space.

It’s a long while until the wall that Joe sits across from swims back into view, and his fingers twitch against the paper – and he shudders out a breath and heaves out of his chair and heads for the kitchenette with an unsteadiness that’s not unlike the sensation of a plane dropping several hundred feet in the air without warning.

He fumbles for the tap, letter crumpling as he turns the knob with fingers he only half feels until water spills over his hand and makes him jerk away on reflex, emptying half the glass and soaking everything from the waist down. Joe stares at the mess, then grabs the tap and twists it off with a squeal.

The window above the kitchen sink looks out into the neighbour’s yard. It’s a neat square of land that’s fringed with flowers. Barry’s been talking about the pool he’s going to install. An above ground one with wood panelling and a deck for the kids. Joe can only imagine the sort of splashing and screaming he’d have to tolerate, and his stomach sinks each time Barry brings it up.

He presses his fingers against his eyes, digs them in until stars burst behind his lids, then blinks away the blackness before draining the rest of the water; throat clicking as he forces it down out of sync with the way his throat rolls.

Joe doesn’t make a habit of studying the letters he receives, only bothers to trail his eyes over them out of respect for the writer before folding them away. But George’s doesn’t immediately join the others and Joe sets it aside until it’s late, like it’s something he has to save for when no one’s around to notice the way he’s tucked onto the sagging couch with only enough ambient light to read; where he trips over the statement of Webster’s death, over and over again.

Thing is that Webster isn’t the first out of Easy to pass away since they’d return. Despite Joe’s inability to reread or respond, he’s kept all the letters he has received; keeps them tucked away in a half packed suitcase, wrapped in a sheet of plastic, so he knows this. But the thing is also that he’s not sure what he’s supposed to feel. There’s anger there, ready to catch and turn into, _he’s already done his part_ , but then the idea of not having to live with the nightmares that never quite let go, or the battle-readiness that rears back into life and sends him to the floor with his heart in his mouth, hands skating for a weapon that doesn’t exist if he hears something that even faintly resembles a gunshot…

The closest estimate of what he feels; this miasma of emotion he can’t quite parse through and name beyond what might be jealousy, what might be relief, all of which hardens into a brittle sort of guilt.

There’s an awareness in what George has written, and he reads it in the pause of George’s words, the letter dotted worse his niece with measles, Clara telling him how Sara’s _covered_ , _Joe, you oughta see how she’s covered head to tail._

Joe’s wrenched up the window for the night, but the curtains stand still. An hour away from the ocean and the humidity is inches thick, feels like he could scoop handfuls of it if he swings his hands through the air. Sweat prickles across his skin and he half wants a shower to slough away the dust and grime, or to just stand beneath the sweetness of it, let the cool chill take him to another place altogether.

But the letter weighs a thousand pounds in his hands and it keeps in anchored to his seat, Jagger snuffling by his leg and whining when Joe doesn’t reach down to touch him.

Webster had moved a couple hours away, Santa Monica, and the move had come through in a letter in his mail box – Joe remembering the way he’d slammed it shut, metal rattling, and how he’d flipped the back of the envelope to see who’d it been from. He’d never learned the slant of Webster’s handwriting, though the details inside were in Webster’s still familiar way of speaking, the long sentences and their three syllable words; the literary references, not intentionally mean in how he’d casually let them drop, but still, all the same: hello, Harvard speaking.

Joe had lifted the letter to his nose in a way every single man in service had done at least once – chasing for familiar notes of perfume, for home, for any suggestion of the life on pause left behind. He’d always searched for a hint of his mother’s cooking, or the sting of gravel on his knees in palms after hauling ass over the fence with his siblings; smell of grass and baked dirt, or a date, being tucked into a booth and the press of a shoe against his ankle and his teeth against a smile.

Nestled in with paper and ink of Webster’s letter had been the hint of the sea and the loose grains of sand coarse that had come away on the sweaty pads of his fingers.

_I’ve relocated to Santa Monica—_

George’s letter had said that Webster went missing on a boat at sea, that he’d left behind a young family.

 _Babe said that you were at this address._ Webster had written. _You could visit sometime. Anytime, Joe._

The intention to answer had fallen wayside a new job, but the excuse had been flimsy.

Still is.

George finishes his letter with the suggestion of finally catching up, and he leaves the question there the same way he’d put down a scrap of food and stand back for some wild animal to take. Joe’d seen him do it enough during boot camp and before the war had ground the sentiment out of him.

-

They had never really discussed what had happened during the war. Joe supposes it paled in the grand scheme of things, and then it had become distant through the years, until he found it unnecessary to pull out and examine.

The day is mild, the cloud overhead smeared on the sky. Joe straightens his back and shoves a hand through his hair, stringy with sweat. He squints in the midday sun and takes a full stock of what he has achieved. His focus idly rests on Len, whose muscles shift behind the transparent dampness of his shirt, sliding thick across his back as he works on a brick wall. Joe flicks his attention away. The heat makes him dizzy and there’s a buzzing in his ears that makes him uneasy because it sounds a little like the whistle of a mortar. Len’s hinted once, a curl of his rough fingers against Joe’s shoulder that had been duly shrugged off, Joe playing like he had no real idea what it had meant.

He ducks into the shade and lights a smoke with unsteady fingers, lips dry around the filter.

“Hey,” someone says – Ben, who has cement dried in clumps on his fingers.

Ben easies to a squat besides him. It’s cool in the shade, and Ben rummages around his pack for a water that he tosses back, and Joe can only imagine what the column of his throat looks like when he swallows; imagines, because he fixes his attention to the house that sits across the street, Mustang parked out the front in a cool blue that’s washed out in the sunlight. The metallic finishes glints at him the same way his sister’s wedding ring does.

The snap-click of a lighter tells Joe that Ben’s going to be there a while, and he quickly finishes off his smoke, draws deep enough for a suggestion of lightheadness and he grinds out the butt and flicks it away.

“The guys are gunna have a thing tonight,” Ben says, “at Josie’s diner on the Main.”

Joe’s knees pop and creak as he stands and he feels his spine clicking into place. He dusts his hands, the motes of dust carried by the sluggish breeze, and waits for Ben to continue.

“Comin?” Ben says.

“Yeah, I’ll see,” Joe says, voice rough. “Gotta lot to do tonight.”

He’s thinking of trading the construction gig for something that damages less, but he keeps that tucked behind his teeth and gets back to work.

-

It’s quiet, nothing but the sound of their breathing and the slide of fabric against skin. Joe digs the blunt of his nails against Webster’s bare torso and Webster hisses between his teeth and Joe says, “Shut up.”

The kiss that follows barely counts as a kiss – a wet slide of tongue, teeth catching on the soft rise of a lip, but it shoots through Joe’s gut and he arches up into the heat of it, wraps an arm around the bulk of Webster’s shoulders to pull him close, his other hand wrapped around the buckle of Webster’s trousers in a grip tight enough to hurt—

Joe jerks to consciousness with a sharp sound. Disorientated and tangled in the thin sheet where the spark of being trapped makes him kick out and scramble upright, hand grasping the spine of the couch. It takes a long while for his heart to settle in his ribs, but the arousal doesn’t go with it. Joe flops back on the pillows and stares up at the ceiling, where the fan does its circuit with a wobble in the blades. He presses the base of his dick, slides his hand over the heat of it, but the slow burn peters out instead of catching, and he turns on his side and studies the stitching of material until he falls back to sleep.

-

Joe calls George later that week from a payphone not far from the construction site. He wedges himself inside the booth, elbows knocking against the walls, and immediately regrets the decision in the suffocating heat of the small space. He kicks the door open and jams it with his foot for a breeze that barely ruffles his hair.

Joe unhooks the phone with one hand and stuffs his other hand in his pocket for the paper he’d ripped out of a catalogue earlier that day. There’s a number scrawled below the advert, and he juggles the paper, the phone, the door as he slots in the coins and dials.

The connection is spotty and he says, “Liebgott,” while George says, “Wait. Who’s this?” – which makes Joe repeat his name a handful of times, louder, until he’s ready to simply hang up and walk away.

“Shit, Joe!” George exclaims, “Why didn’t you say something?”

There’s a smile in George’s voice and the anger drains from Joe’s spine so abruptly that he sags against the wall of the booth.

George doesn’t even comment about the years of radio silence, and Joe just…—listens with the receiver tucked tight against his ear enough to hurt. George sounds the same, though the sharp parts of his accent has blunted, the cadence a beat slower with age, and Joe doesn’t realise how hard he grips the phone until the plastic protests and George pauses to ask, “What was that?”

“Huh?”

“Thought you said something,” George says, “but how’ve you been, Lieb, good?”

“Good,” Joe says, and then, “I got your letter last week.”

“Yeah, okay,” George says, softer this time. He clears his throat and the sound comes distorted across the line. “Sorry the news wasn’t anything you’d want to hear,” a pause, “You’n Web. You guys were, uh—“

Joe’s instinct is to snap, “Not like that,” but his mother’d raised him better than a liar, and the fight tumbles out of him and Joe rolls his shoulders forward, head dipped. “Shit, Luz—we—“

Thing is he’s never sought to define what it was he had with Webster. He’s never made to, but the news of him…—the news of him has dragged it back to the surface where it sits like an oil slick on water, unable to dissolve into the rest of his thoughts.

At twenty seven, he’d been operating on a specific set of guidelines. Webster had come to him at twenty two, more or less, young enough to test them. Joe shifts in the small space and rests his head back against the wall of the booth, stares at the empty corner overhead.

“He was a good man,” George says, and Joe scoffs, rubs across his eyes with the blade of his hand because Webster was many, many things that Joe could never pin down, much less articulate, framed in a context that Joe had shoved to the back of his head since he’d stepped foot back home.

“Yeah,” Joe says, finally. He’s still staring at that spot, but it’s hard to focus with the way his vision blurs and how his eyes sting. “Yeah, he was something.”

-

Joe gets back to driving cabs about a month later. His back thanks him for it, and the ache that had laced through old wounds settles to almost non-existence a few weeks in; the scar tissue softer, less rigid when he skims his hand over it to rub the day-long tension out. Instead he comes home with his head throbbing and with his thoughts arranged in city-wide maps, and he opens his letter box, collects the mail and strides up the steps to greet Jagger inside, where he whines and circles his legs.

He flicks through his mail and his heart thuds hard in his chest when he thinks he recognises the handwriting, and it feels like he’s been dumped in ice water, fingers numb and chest constricted and he flips the letter, hands shaking, for the return address.

It’s a fucking bill.

Joe sits staggers, falls hard on his ass on the couch as the residual beat of panic lances through him. And then at once he’s angry and he tears the letter up, only his hands are shaking too hard and so the paper crumples in his hands, bunched tight in his fists—

Jagger’s skittish, circles where he stands before he shoves his head onto Joe’s lap. Joe mumbles something that sounds like _fucking asshole_. He’s not sure, not really hearing himself and bends, spine protesting as he shoves his face to the warmth of Jagger’s ruff and breathes in the smell of him – his fur and the crisp, sharp scent of summer beneath it.

“’m so fucking tired, Jag,” Joe says, and he manages to wrench open his arms to scoop Jagger up and hauls him onto the couch.

-

“Hey,” Webster says.

Joe ignores him to idle over the book in his hands. He feels the heat of the sun against his neck, where it curls in the collar of his uniform and bleeds into the fabric. A shadow falls across his lap and dulls the crisp white of the book’s pages.

Joe doesn’t look up.

He hears Webster huff, impatient.

Joe doesn’t move.

There’s another second before Webster folds to sit beside him, a column of heat by Joe’s elbow that’s deeper, firm, _present_ , forcing Joe to straighten where he sits. The press of Webster’s fingers on the point of Joe’s elbow is a tentative one, but it’s only cautious for a second before Webster skims his hand up along his arm to curl against Joe’s sun warm neck.

“What’re you reading?” Webster asks.

“A book.”

“Any good?”

Joe shrugs. “It’s something.”

The hand stays there with Webster’s thumb casually resting against Joe’s war wound, the nick of skin healed but sensitive in a way that Webster’s very much aware of.

Webster says, “I’m fond of the ocean.”

Joe feels his confusion gather in the draw of his brow as he glances to Webster who’s looking over the ridge of mountain, to where the scenery staggers below in evergreens and bursts of wild flowers.

“Maybe you should’ve joined the Marines,” Joe says, finally.

The blue of Webster’s eyes are washed out by the sun, more a crisp grey, more like crushed glass when he looks at Joe in outright confusion.

“I’m fond if it,” Webster says again. There’s a question in his tone that Joe can’t quite read. “The ocean. You’re from Oakland, right?”

“Yeah, I’m from there. You know that.”

Joe takes the time to light up a cigarette. The altitude makes the nicotine rush to his head and he’s curbed the habit a little because of the way his stomach roils when it happens. Webster doesn’t speak and he keeps his hand in place as he turns back to the scenery, cupped around the skinny column of Joe’s neck, to the snow-capped peaks and the glitter of a lake that’s tucked between the mountains – and Joe feels the urge to grind out his cigarette so as not to spoil it.

-

The guy in the back is sharp and impatient, and when Joe comes to a slow stop at every red light, he breathes out a swear. Joe glances to the rear-view mirror and is presented with the profile of the guy – younger than he’d initially thought, face tight with checked anger. He’s got a strong nose and full lips, skin this shade of olive and Joe allows himself to think, _yeah_.

He drops him off in front of a squat business centre that’s all gold-washed panelled glass. It’s a popular look, though it reflects the sun into his eyes, and makes him squint.

Joe’s about to hit the indicators to pull away from the curb, before a someone door pops open and the person asks, “Are you free?”, and Joe says, “Yeah.”

-

The first time he sees Webster – really sees Webster – is at Upottery. His face is familiar in the way everybody’s is familiar; as is the shift of his body, the stance at which he holds himself. Joe could catch sight of him in near pitch black and know that it was Webster by the cock of his hip, but he really sees him in Upottery. In those handful of days before the jump, nerves skittish, until he catches the twist of Webster’s hands on a measure of rope that Joe follows up to his arms, and then to his neck, arched away to address Perconte, the taut line of Webster’s jugular shadowed in the waning light.

The exact details have been fuzzed out by the intermittent years, but he never forgets the way his body had seized when Webster had turned back, and how his eyes had locked onto Joe’s – not seeking, but found – and the look had been questioning until the moment dragged, significant, until Webster’s confusion had slid slowly to surprise and Joe angled his jaw in a fumbled response.

-

If he thinks, if he really thinks; if he lies on his bed and presses the hollow of his back against the mattress for a hint of cool sheets, Joe can snag the sensation of English weather.

It’s almost like chasing an orgasm and his body tenses, then relaxes when he finds it – the thin drizzle and the way his breath had puffed before him as he had trudged across various fields with his hands shoved in his pockets, boots scuffing against the gravel and sending loose pebbles everywhere.

George is rambling beside him and he gestures sometimes, hand knocking against Joe’s elbow. The beat of George’s words is familiar and Joe lets it roll over him, distractedly aware of his responses as his attention slides across the scenery: the short, kept hedges and brick housing that had looked like they leapt out from a storybook at first, until they had become a constant enough to be called ‘home’.

“Anything wrong?” George asks, and the question pulls Joe’s attention.

“What?” Joe says, “I’m listening.”

“I’m listening, he says,” George’s already grinning. “Did you even hear what I just said?”

Joe backtracks through his thoughts and George throws his head and laughs when he pulls up nothing.

Joe’s shrug is a little helpless, a little self-depreciating, and he says, “Maybe if you actually said something of use.”

“Oh ho,” George shakes a finger at him, and then pauses to light up a cigarette. “Beep. Wrong. You weren’t listening and I have reasons why.”

Joe snorts.

“You’re sweet, Joe, you’re _sweet_.”

-

Phoning George opens a proverbial floodgate, because an envelope appears each time he opens his mail box over the following week until there’s a grand total of six from Easy. Joe pauses at the latest one, postmark from Illinois and the delivery address penned in furious angles, like the writer had done their best to transcribe a sucker punch from half a country over. It works, a little.

Joe staggers up the concrete path of his house, sun beating against his back, mail in hand. Jagger greets him at the door with a happy whine and the beat of his tail against the panelled floors.

“Hey,” Joe says, cupping Jagger’s head to ruffle his ears. The letters bunch in his hands and Joe straightens to toss them aside, dumping them on the kitchen table with his keys.

He makes dinner, meat and potatoes, and he catches sight of Barry and his kids dipping in and out of their pool, the sound of splashing water punctured by the high shrieks of children. Another memory threatens on the very seam of Joe’s awareness, and his hand tightens around his cutlery – but it’s the languid threads of late afternoon sun that roots him in the present, and his chest unlocks after a long while, long enough to have Barry herd his kids inside with the promise of dinner and TV.

Joe shovels the last of his dinner in his mouth, chews mechanically though his head tells him he’s not hungry, and he dumps his plate in the kitchen sink, silverware cracking against the porcelain loud enough to coax a short and sharp bark from Jagger.

Joe slushes him then says, “Sorry.”

The letters sit on the table like a loaded weapon, Joe turning the soft spots of his body away every time he has to pass, but they sit there; growing, and it’s late when Joe gathers up the steel to address them. Joe stares down at the papers, worries the loose skin that fringe his nails until he rips one off and the sting of it makes him hiss, and he sucks on it while he fumbles for the letters, scooping them up and crossing the living space to the bedroom.

The title of bedroom is generous. The one he had grown up in had been just as small, but where Joe’s is stripped and bare, a thin mattress on the floor and a suitcase flipped open – his childhood bedroom had been a collection of comics and prints and home-made toys, shared and revered by him and each of his siblings in turn.

He drops to his knees, the carpet muffling the sound but not the pain that sparks through his bones, and he digs his hands through his neatly folded clothes of his suitcase for the smooth square of plastic that sits at the bottom. Joe pulls it out with care, the sheet rippling beneath his hands. It’s heavier than it looks, and he sets it to the floor and undoes the cord he’d tied around it.

The clip of Jagger’s nails stop at the bedroom door, and Joe glances up, hands pausing, and he says, “C’mere,” and he huffs out a laugh when Jagger doesn’t respond further than to cock his head, human in the way it looks as if he’s sure he’s misheard.

“C’mere,” Joe gestures. “I wanna show you something.”

Jagger comes. Joe undoes the sheet of plastic and carefully folds it aside. His attention glosses over the medals that sit on top, and he sifts under them for the letters, pulls out the thick sheaf of them where a couple slip out onto the floor.

-

“What do you write about anyway?”

Joe only bothers to ask for conversation, not so much because he really cares what Webster writes, because he _knows_ what Webster writes. Joe’s fully aware of where Webster’s eyes travel; how they take stock of his surroundings, draws it all in so that he can put it to paper. Joe thinks all of the half formed sentences that live in Webster’s head, and then tilts his chin to hide his smile when the thought continues: _they’re why he looks so vacant_.

-

Joe shuffles through the envelopes and loose sheets of paper. The dust that billows up tickles his nose and he swears each time he sneezes, but he finds the one he’s after, handwriting a familiar slant across the front, and draws it from the pile, pinched between two fingers. Joe slides his fingers across the bumpy imprint of his address as if he could glean a sense of the person who wrote it. His heart thuds hard in his chest, then sinks to his stomach where it drags the warmth of his body with it.

-

“I’m writing about the war,” Webster says.

Joe asks, “You write about me?”

Webster glances at him without bothering to lift his head, a sliver of blue peering at him from beneath thick frame of his lashes. He’s annoyed at the constant interruption. Joe reads it in the tense corner of his mouth and in the deep lines of Webster’s brow.

“A little,” he says.

Joe shifts, ass numb from where he’d been sitting on the bunk. There’s a mattress, but it’s thinner than the paper Webster writes on so all he feels are the slats beneath.

“Do you write about you?”

Webster's mouth purses and then flattens into a thin line. He doesn’t bother looking up at Joe this time, pen scratching across the pages.

“A little,” he says, finally.

-

Joe soothes out the paper inside, the creases starting to tear at the edges. The Webster in the letter tells him about the ocean, only where it had once tentatively included Joe, it now speaks of his family – the youngest just born. Joe’s throat clicks when he swallows and he reaches out to curl a hand into the thick fur of Jagger’s ruff.

He supposes now, twenty odd years too late, he could have said something that resembled more like: _yeah, I like it, too_.

But. Joe supposes. He drags the pad of his finger against the words, the neat cursive an echo of what his sister says in each of her own letters, in the letters that had come from Easy, _Anytime, Joe_.

Anytime.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, based on HBO representation. 
> 
> All the thanks in the world to Shan for letting me know I was doing alright and for dealing with all my flailing messages. Title comes from _Karen_ by _The National_. Not externally beta'd; please let me know if there are any issues.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://scramjets.tumblr.com).


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